Trouble using the emulator

[Mr D Wong]

Hi there,

I'm trying to use aiStarter for the AppInventor 2 emulator in a school environment and I was wondering if it'd be possible for some guidance. I've installed the AppInventor 2 setup onto a laptop and the emulator successfully connects when I'm logged in as an administrator. However when I use a teacher account and try to use aiStarter  and connect I get 'Launch the aiStarter program on your computer and then try again'

Regards

Daniel

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This e-mail and any attachments are intended to be read by the above named recipients only and the contents may be confidential. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail you must not act on it, copy it or show it to anyone; but do please reply to this email and highlight the error, then delete it from your computer. Any views or opinions expressed within this email are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect those of Manchester Communication Academy.

[SteveJG]

You need to talk to the school's IT administrator.  You network at school is setup with a Firewall and probably requires certain permissions.  I suspect, unless you are not authorized to access port 8004  because of your firewall.

The process that starts the emulator involves several programs working together. There are many things that can go wrong, such as unexpected configurations, restrictions on the network you are using, or other software running on your computer that interferes with App Inventor. For school computers, we've seen several issues that interfere with App Inventor, including firewalls on school networks, restrictions on software the the machines can run, and ports being blocked. Symptoms you might encounter include the emulator starting up and then freezing, or not starting at all, or App Inventor displaying "unable to connect" messages.

Your IT person might read:  https://groups.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/mitappinventortest/loRJYRPVE-8  

and 

• Set Up: Connect phone/tablet or emulator for live testing as you build

and http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/ai2/connect-help-emulator.html

and https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NbJRyCA9udxdU3oNyadR0fuvNglijYR7X3mVB_ZIeNU/pub

and http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/ai2/support/troubleshooting.html  

Sorry, that is a lot of reading.  Teachers using AI2, however, need to navigate the maze.

You or your IT folks have specific questions, please ask again  and please do let us know how you got your teaching environment working.

Regards,

Steve